The UK’s independent inquiry into COVID-19 is due to launch in Spring 2022. Until then, this parliamentary report is the best assessment we are likely to get into the government’s pandemic response. And putting aside the success of the vaccine and former health secretary Matt Hancock’s “100,000 tests target”, the cross-party committee’s conclusions are damning.
The government’s initial “fatalistic” approach was “a serious early error”. The test, trace and isolate system was “often chaotic” and “ultimately failed”. Thousands of care home deaths “could have been avoided”.
The committee uses strong language (“serious mistake”, “major deficiencies”) to describe how parts of the civil service were unprepared for dealing with complex crises. The committee of MPs are particularly critical about the operation of COBR, the government’s emergency committee. And they argue Public Health England (PHE) was “scientifically accomplished” but poor at delivery.
Of course, those in government argue many of these lessons have long been learnt. PHE has been axed and replaced with the UK Health Security Agency. Department of Health policies have completely changed. Mr Hancock has left his job.
The report is, however, a reminder that whilst the UK’s vaccine strategy was excellently executed, many massive mistakes had already been made.
More details will, undoubtedly, be forthcoming …
In the meantime, while deaths and hospitalisations have been significantly reduced, the number of recorded new cases in the UK remains at around 40,000 a day:
Sounds like someone stating the bleeding obvious. Everybody in the rest of the world knew Britain (and a lot of Europe) cocked it up in a spectacular fashion from the beginning by not locking down early and hard.
No sh** Sherlock.
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence was aware of the aweful mistakes made by this government, mistakes which cost thousands of lives. But of course the usual will happen, some finger wagging a bit of tut tutting and not one person will be held accountable.
This government has blood on its hands and criminal proceedings should be instigated against those responsible.
The opposition party, Labour, must also take some responsibility for the woeful actions of the government by their incredibly poor behavior.
I haven’t misread the report as I haven’t read the report yet.
It is just I get very angry about how the government and opposition have behaved and now and again I need to vent that anger if that is OK?
What is never reported is that, when a new Crisis hits, mainstream folks expect a small elected representative (?) body of such, to be able to seamlessly fix it.
Yes indeed and while mistakes have certainly been made, criticising how an unexpected catastrophe has been handled with the benefit of hindsight does too frequently seem to be more about point-scoring than what it should be about which is learning lessons to ensure that these mistakes do not get repeated in the future.
Until a completely different new totally-unexpected catastrophe arrives, of course.
Boris Johnson and his most senior aides have been found to have committed grievous Covid-19 errors that led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
The damning joint report by Commons committees, chaired by Conservative former Cabinet Ministers and with Tory majorities, is the reason why the Prime Minister is delaying a full public inquiry.
The conclusions – fatal lockdown delays, care home carnage and expensive test and trace disasters – are truly grim.
Mr Johnson’s incompetent leadership helped send victims to early graves.
When the nation most needed a leader with sound judgment, bodies piled up under the misrule of a deadly amateur incapable of grasping the terrible danger as he dawdled for a critical week in March last year.
We owe it to the dead, survivors and their families to hold to account those responsible.
There are many considerations when an uncharted crisis hits, such things like mass panic, Law and Order, Economy considerations, etc, etc, not into defending folks but, whoever was leader at the time was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
